


Op. 57: Intermezzo in F Minor

by Desiree_Harding



Series: Stolen Century (Desiree Style) [3]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Barry and Taako are brothers and you can't change my mind, Blupjeans is a thing in this one but it's not the main focus, Canon Compliant, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, It's about that good good Barry and Taako friendship, Suicide mention, They have a good talk, no actual suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 20:39:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17230847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desiree_Harding/pseuds/Desiree_Harding
Summary: "As soon as they came back without her, Taako had taken one look at them and marched into his room, shutting the door soundly behind him without another word.He’s been in there for three days, and Barry is starting to worry."In which Barry worries, Taako gets angry, and they have a very important talk.





	Op. 57: Intermezzo in F Minor

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to ad_asterism again for helping me beta! Much Love!  
> Also, in case the tags were unclear, this one references suicide, though no suicide is actually happens. Brief mention of blood. If those ain't great for ya, please take care of yourselves :)  
> Enjoy!

Lup is dead.

It was only the first day. They had the rhythm down - new plane, go down to the surface, establish contact - and they had thought it would be fine. And it  _ was _ fine, at first, the people were friendly, they were willing to talk, and then - and then while Barry wasn’t looking one of them came out of the crowd and went at Lup with a knife and it was - it was too fast. Barry only turned to look when he heard her scream, but by then it was too late. Barry  _ saw  _ the light leave her eyes and her blood spill over the hard-packed ground.

The man had gone for her ears after that, and Barry couldn’t  _ see _ , so all consuming was his fury, and by the time the spell left his hands to  _ destroy  _ him everything had broken into mayhem, and they were making a mad dash back to the ship, and Davenport was taking them back up to hover over the planet, high enough that no one could reach them.

The worst thing was that Taako had wanted to go with them, but it was his turn to stay onboard the ship and Lup had promised him she would be fine.

As soon as they came back without her, Taako had taken one look at them and marched into his room, shutting the door soundly behind him without another word.

He’s been in there for three days, and Barry is starting to worry.

Fuck that, he’s not just starting to worry, he’s  _ been _ worrying. He’s been worrying for the whole of the three days, because Taako won’t come out, and they’ve kept Magnus from knocking incessantly on his door, but no matter what they say they haven’t heard a sound and Taako hasn’t come out at  _ all _ , and Barry’s trying his best to cook with what they have, but he’s not  _ good _ like the twins are and gods, he needs Taako to come out. He’s seen how Taako’s looked in the few weeks when Lup has been gone. But it was always just before the end of the year before. Now, with a whole year without his sister, Barry’s not sure Taako can take it. He’s scared that he’ll finally get into Taako’s room and find him dead on the floor, unable to stand being without his sister for so long. Just wanting to speed things up and  _ get to next year. _

Taako’s smart, and part of Barry wants to believe he wouldn’t, but Barry also knows Taako. Knows that he values himself so little, and his greatest fear is being alone.

That’s why he’s standing outside Taako’s door, on the afternoon of the third day, and steeling himself as he stares at its blank, white, clinical surface.

He has to knock. He has to check.

He takes a deep breath, raises a hand –

Knocks on the door. Three times, not loud, but enough to be heard, he knows, if Taako is in there.

No response from the room.

He tries again, a couple minutes later.

“Taako?” he says this time, his heart rate picking up, nervous now. “Taako, please open up. You haven’t been out in days. We’re worried about you, everyone is. Please come out and eat something at least.”

Nothing, not even after he waits for a long time. Not a single sound from Taako’s room and Barry is  _ really freaking the fuck out _ .

He knocks again, louder. Pounding on the door now.

_ Nothing, nothing, nothing _ .

He can’t. He can’t fucking do it anymore.

He magic missiles the fucking door. Level 3.

Taako has wards on his room, but even  _ he _ didn’t prepare for five magic missiles hitting his door from close range, and it’s immediately blown off its hinges.

There’s no sound coming from inside the room, a conspicuous  _ non-sound _ , Barry belatedly realizes, which is probably why he isn’t ready for the fireball headed straight at him.

It also explains why he doesn’t dodge it even a little.

It hurts like  _ hell _ , and Barry goes down, flat on his back in the hallway, and he  _ hates  _ the way that fire magic scorches his skin. The Starblaster is fireproof, every part of it, but Barry most certainly  _ isn’t _ , and he’s in  _ agony _ .

His ears are ringing, and he can’t see, but through his pain-fueled haze, he hears a voice: Taako.

“ **_WHAT THE FUCK, BAROLD?!_ ** _ ” _

It takes a second for him to push himself into a sitting position, but when he does, Taako is standing in his ruined doorway, bags under his eyes, his hair a  _ mess _ , wand pointed straight out at him, and he’s  _ furious _ .

Barry is too, seeing him now, because he had been so  _ scared _ and Taako couldn’t even be  _ bothered  _ to answer him.

“I thought something happened to you!” he shouts at Taako, scrambling to his feet, wincing all the way up.

“Like  _ WHAT?” _

“I don’t know!” Barry cried, throwing his hands up in the air in exasperation, “You haven’t come out of your room in three days, and nobody’s seen you, and it was completely fucking  _ silent  _ in there, and I thought something happened to you, so sue me for caring about you, I guess, you massive fucking  _ idiot!” _

Taako’s still breathing heavy, fire in his eyes, and he’s just staring at Barry, and Barry’s looking back at him, and he’s in pain, but he’s so gods-damned  _ relieved _ to see him that he feels his throat tighten up like he’s about to cry, and maybe he is.

Taako looks like all the wind has been knocked out of him.

“Barry,” he says, and his voice is all soft, but Barry feels something welling up inside of him that he has to let out.

“ _ No!”  _ he shouts,  _ “fuck you _ , Taako! You didn’t think that maybe we were  _ worried _ about you? We’ve known each other for almost sixty  _ years _ ! I know Lup’s gone but you can’t just shut yourself away like you’re not going to scare the ever-loving  _ shit _ out of us if you disappear for days at a time!”

“Barry…”

“ _ Gods-dammit _ , Taako,” Barry says, and he’s  _ definitely  _ crying now. “I know it’s not the same, but you’re  _ my  _ brother too and I wasn’t just going to sit out here wondering if you were alive or dead in there.” He wipes furiously at his eyes with his burned, blistering palms. He can’t even get a decent  _ heal  _ because Merle’s already gone to Parley for the year. “Fuck this,” he says, pissed off and frightened and relieved and absolutely overloaded because  _ Lup _ is gone, and Merle is gone, and Taako can’t go down to the planet this year or they’ll kill him, and he needs  _ quiet _ .

“Glad you’re not dead,” he chokes out, because he can’t bring himself to storm away without a word when Taako’s sister, when  _ Lup _ is gone, but he does walk down the hallway to his room, slipping inside and leaning against the door as it closes.

And then he really lets himself cry.

He cries for Lup, because she’s gone, and he cries for Taako, because he knows he misses her, and he cries for Merle, because he’s dead, and he cries for Davenport, who misses him. He cries for Magnus who blames himself every time because he can’t protect them all from everything. He cries for Lucretia, who has to dutifully write it all down, the one of them who can never afford to spare herself the details.

He cries because Taako is so mad at him, and he sort of should be, but Barry was  _ scared _ . He was worried, and he wanted Taako to be okay, and didn’t  _ know _ , and he thought ‒ he really thought that Taako might have been gone, and he just  _ panicked _ .

He cries until he’s all cried out, and his body hurts so much, and there’s no Lup to come sit by his side and comfort him with soft words and soft hands, and the remembering of that little fact sets him off again, but now it’s just horrible dry sobs that make him feel like he’s going to be sick.

And when even that’s calmed, when there’s truly nothing left in him, when every emotion he’s got in stock has been used up, he’s exhausted. And all he wants is just to sit in his room and forget everything that’s ever happened to him. But he can’t, because he yelled at Taako for that exact same thing just… gods, what must be over an hour ago now. And fuck it, nobody on the Starblaster gives a fuck if he cries. There’s no reason these days to hide a tear-stained face from the crew. He scrubs a cloth across his face and gets up.

The hallway is quiet when he gets out there, but the direction of Taako’s room is still absolute carnage that Barry gently chooses to ignore.

He doesn’t know where to go. Not out on the deck; he doesn’t want to look at the planet that killed Lup right now. So instead he turns right, heads toward the kitchen. Maybe an unconscious part of him wants Lup, hell, maybe a conscious part of him wants Lup. Actually, that’s definitely true.

As he approaches, he hears the slightest noise. The sound of the stove clicking off, and when he rounds the doorway ‒

Taako is there. Hair in a messy buns, in sweatpants and a t-shirt, looking like shit, but blessedly  _ alive _ .

And pouring hot water for tea into two mugs. Barry recognizes them as pottery gifted to them from the students of the Legato Conservatory’s art programs. Something they wouldn’t submit to the mountain, but beautiful all the same, because everything on Legato was beautiful. And Barry thinks, defeated, irrational, that maybe the whole universe is just going to remind him at every turn that Lup is gone, until he can’t breathe from the weight of it.

Taako picks up the mugs, walks to the tiny galley table that’s been so beat up over the many years on the ship. He doesn’t look at Barry, but he wordlessly pushes one of the mugs across the table in front of another chair.

Barry sits down, takes the mug.

“Thanks,” he says.

Taako still doesn’t say anything.

So they drink in silence, the two of them across the table from each other, and it’s awkward and horrible and Barry’s filled with a sinking feeling that he hates, and it’s  _ guilt _ , and he’s so tired from the rest of it, the blinding worry and the panic from the whole afternoon, and the pain still prickling along his skin from Taako’s spell.

It’s so much.

“Sorry for fucking up your room,” he says, before he can think about it.

Taako refills his cup with more water and Barry dunks the teabag, fiddling with the string.

“Well.” Taako says, and then he doesn’t say anything else.

“I was just… I was worried,” Barry says, not looking at his brother. “I thought –”

“I’m not a –,” Taako makes a frustrated sound. “I wasn’t about to  _ off _ myself just because –” he doesn’t finish, just swallows heavily. “I wouldn’t do that,” he says, and he looks more upset about it than Barry ever thought he would, angry somehow, and maybe a little bit horrified somewhere deep that Barry can’t place.

“Good,” he says, taking a long drink of tea, and letting it burn on the way down, to match the rest of him. “Good. I’m – good to know.”

“I need to have privacy too,” Taako says, insistently. “You can’t – I’m not that fucking  _ fragile _ , that you have to fucking – put me on watch when she’s gone.”

“I know,” Barry says. “I know, you should be allowed to –”

“Clearly you  _ didn’t know _ , Barold.” Taako’s voice is icy and it makes Barry’s skin prickle, more than it already does. “I know Lup jokes around about me being the little brother, but I don’t need a  _ babysitter _ .”

“I know –”

“Do you?” Taako looks at him, and Barry remembers when he didn’t know Taako like he knows him now. Back then, these looks would get to him. He’d see Taako looking at someone like this, all sharp eyes and insight like you wouldn’t believe, and he’d remember all in all rush that this elf was top of his class at the IPRE, and all the aloof put-upon mannerisms couldn’t change that he was one of the smartest and most  _ aware _ people Barry had ever met.

He would never be caught dead underestimating Taako like that these days. Not when he was in his right mind. But he hadn’t been in his right mind, had he? He’d panicked.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry for invading your space like that, I just… I got worried.”

Some of the sharpness leaves Taako’s eyes.

“We were all worried about you, Taako. Even if you were fine we – we don’t want you to shut yourself away, we’re – we’re here to help you.”

Now it’s Taako’s turn to look away uncomfortably.

“I know none of us grieve Lup the way you do,” Barry says, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t – we can’t at least  _ sympathize  _ with you.”

Taako shifts in the plastic chair, and lays his head on the table, hidden in his arms. He doesn’t say anything else, and Barry sips at his tea slowly in the silence.

And then Barry sees Taako slowly and deliberately lay a hand on the table. Palm-up. He doesn’t pick his head up, but he puts out a hand, and Barry only hesitates a moment before he takes it, squeezes a little to let Taako know he’s here, he’s not going anywhere, he’s with him.

“I miss her,” muffled from his arms, and decidedly tearful. Barry heart feels like it weighs a hundred pounds in his chest.

“Me too.”

“It’s – it’s not the same when she’s gone, everything’s all  _ wrong. _ ”

“I know.”

Taako’s shoulders start to shake, and Barry never ever sees Taako cry. Ever. It’s a cold day in hell before Taako lets anyone see him down like this. And being pulled into this small, intimate space with Taako, someone he hardly ever spends time with without Lup around, since she can always be counted on to hang out with one of them, suddenly makes the whole thing seem more real, makes her absence stand out that much more, like a tangible energy in the room, if the lack of someone could have an energy.

Barry’s heart swells and breaks as he watches Taako cry, head down, shoulders shaking with the effort, gasping out sobs, and Barry’s throat tightens at it even though he has no more tears left to shed in his body. He can feel the headache of them pressing behind his eyes and his forehead.

Taako cries for his sister, and Barry, as horrible al Lup’s death was, thinks that this must be worse, feeling as left behind as Taako does. Dying doesn’t feel like anything – it’s over in a moment. This is worse. This is so much worse, and Barry, for a horrible, dark moment, thinks that it isn’t too out of character to imagine that Taako would kill himself, because he almost wants to do the same.

He shakes that thought out of his head as quickly and violently as he can, because it won’t get him anywhere, and mostly because he knows it would break Lup’s heart to know he was thinking it.

What he does do is he pulls on Taako’s hand until he raises his head, confused, and Barry ignores the spark of anger beginning to flicker in his eyes. He scoots his chair right next to Taako’s and wraps his brother up in a hug.

Taako tenses for a moment, but he eventually lets his head fall to Barry’s shoulder and lets himself cry, getting Barry’s shirt all wet (nothing a quick prestidigitation won’t fix) as Barry holds him.

“I want Lup,” he says pitifully, “I don’t know how I’m gonna go a whole year without her, I’ve never been alone that long ever in my life – I – I don’t know what to  _ do _ –”

“I know, bud,” Barry says, “and I’m sorry. We said she’d be fine and she wasn’t and I’m sorry.”

Taako sobs again, raw and terrible.

“But you’re gonna have all of us, me and Magnus and Dav and Lucretia, and we’re not gonna leave you, okay? You’re not alone. You don’t ever have to be alone if you don’t wanna be, bud, you just tell us and we’ll do anything for you.”

“You’re such a fucking nerd,” Taako says, wetly, pulling back from his shoulder and wiping his eyes. It sounds so much like Lup for a moment that Barry’s heart almost comes right out of his mouth.

But it’s not Lup. It’s Taako, his brother, who he loves just as much, albeit completely differently. And Barry knows that from Taako, the flippant dismissal is really an acceptance. A thank you. A message received.

He hands Taako one of the paper napkins lying on the table so he can dab at his wet face.

“Well you know,” he says, “I guess it’s part of the brand.”

Taako chokes on a horrible half-laugh, but he’s got his face mostly dried off at this point, and Barry thinks again how good it is to see him, even tearful and on the verge of falling apart with no Lup around to pull him back from the brink of that darkness that’s always lingered in Taako. It’s in both of them, he thinks. If Barry shares his empathy with Lup, the disease that is loving too much too quickly and caring about people far too deeply, he also shares this darkness with Taako. There’s sense that at any moment, they both could fall into the abyss of despair if someone isn’t there to drag them out.

He thinks that over the century Taako may already have. That for all his efforts, and Lup’s too, they’ve lost a little bit of who Taako was back on their homeworld, and he’s not sure if they’ll ever get it back.

And then he blinks, and it’s gone. It’s just Taako sitting there. Taako whom Barry has known for longer than he knew his own mother.

Taako gets up from the table, picking up their tea mugs and dropping them into the sink with a clatter, and the sound brings Barry back to the real world somehow, reminds him that there’s light and air and a whole world outside the walls of the ship and he’s got work to do and time to live through and it can’t all be spent in the fog of grief that’s descended over the galley in the last half-hour.

And Taako’s getting things out of the fridge and from the lower cabinets. The enormous bag of rice, pots and pans and all manner of vegetables and the cutting board and the good knives.

“Well, Barold?” he says, and Barry’s head snaps around to look at him, but Taako’s got his back to him, filling the pot with water. And then he says, “are you gonna fuckin’ help or not? I don’t know about you, but ya boy’s fuckin’  _ starving _ .”

“You hate it when I cook,” Barry blurts, before he has the time to recognize the clear olive branch.

Taako turns around, fixes him with those sharp eyes that surprised Barry on their first day, and never stop.

“Firstly, we can’t call the thing you do  _ cooking _ ,” Taako says derisively, “And secondly, my sister’s fucking  _ dead _ , my man,” he says, flat and tired and mourning but Barry  _ gets _ it. “The least you can do is chop some fucking carrots.”

And Barry does. And it’s slow and horrible and Taako’s constantly correcting him, and has chopped three more vegetables into neat little piles before Barry’s done with his carrots. But when Barry slides the cutting board over to him, Taako thanks him.

And it isn’t until Barry’s lying in bed that night and can’t sleep, and hears a knock on the door, that he realizes it wasn’t for the carrots.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the read! Leave a kudos/comment if so inclined, and you can always hop over to my tumblr, @desiree-harding, if you want to see more from this series or want to yell at me about more TAZ.  
> Much love!  
> \- Desiree


End file.
